A look at letters through the camera's lens

When the NYT published an OpEd about the death of letter-writing the other day, many commentators engaged in a collective eye-roll. It isn’t the medium that matters, they countered, so long as we’re still writing (“obviously” was the implied addendum). Others waxed nostalgic about their cache of love letters and cited the personal immediacy, as opposed to the temporal immediacy of email, of holding a letter that had once been touched by the person who wrote it.
   
Unsurprisingly, Hollywood has long made use of the romantic and psychological aspects of letters. They can provide a glimpse into a character’s thought process without the use of a narrator, they can serve as a convenient plot point, they can even help illuminate character through a quick shot of his or her handwriting. The latter was of great importance to the 1940 crime film The Letter, in which Bette Davis’ acquittal or condemnation hinged upon a letter written in her hand. Not to hop aboard the Luddites’ horse-drawn bandwagon, but being caught via an email trace doesn’t quite match the ironic richness of a baddy who has literally sealed her own fate.

Even with their growing archaism, letters continue to play a cinematic role beyond mere props or plot devices in Victorian novel adaptations. Whether it’s Wes Anderson building the foundation of his runaways' love story through an epistolary correspondence in Moonrise Kingdom, or David Lowery using letters as a link between Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck in a film that otherwise sees the lovers in just three scenes together in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, or Briony (Saoirse Ronan) abusing her role as a letter-carrying messenger in Atonement, letters have yet to be narratively discarded.

Our latest list is a look at some epistolary highlights in both classic and recent films. It’s a brief one, so let us know what we’ve missed in the comments below:

The Letter (1940)
Available on Netflix
A wealthy, married woman (Bette Davis) murders a well-to-do man in the middle of the night in Malaya. She claims the man was the aggressor and she shot him to save her honor. But when a damning letter addressed to the victim, written in the woman’s hand, surfaces, the woman and her lawyer must do everything they can to keep the evidence from coming to light.
 

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Available on Netflix
Co-workers at a gift shop in Budapest, Alfred Kralik (Jimmy Stewart) and Klara Novak (Margaret Sullivan) simply cannot get along. Each finds the other insufferable, and certainly not nearly as cultured and amiable and generally wonderful as their respective pen pals – right? Based on the play Parfumerie, the same source material for 1998’s You’ve Got Mail.
 

Vertigo (1958)
Available on Netflix and streaming on Hulu
Detective Scottie Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) has been having a rough time of it ever since he watched a criminal fall to his death. Now Scottie’s got a bad case of vertigo, though that doesn’t stop him from taking what should be an easy if odd case: trail a friend’s wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), because the friend (Tom Helmore) fears she’s suicidal. His concern proves tragically justified when Scottie, too afraid to pursue Madeleine to the top of a tower, watches her throw herself to her death. When he finds a woman who looks just like Madeleine, whom he had begun to love, months later, he forces her to dress up and adhere to his ideal. But this new woman has secrets of her own – which she explains in a letter that helps out the audience a great deal, even if she rips it up before poor Scottie can catch a glimpse.
 

Atonement (1997)
Available on Netflix
The worst little sister of all time, Briony (Saoirse Ronan) is charged with delivering a love letter from Robbie (James McAvoy), the son of a family servant, to her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley). Briony has a crush on Robbie, and is both confused and angered when she witnesses a moment of sexual tension between the two. She soon finds an outlet for her jealousy when an assault is committed later that night. Briony accuses Robbie, using the explicit letter he’s given her as proof of his deviant mind. Her lie has resounding repercussions.
 

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Available on Netflix
Two kids in love exchange a series of letters as they plot to run away together. A serious crowd-pleaser.
 

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013)
Available on Netflix
Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) breaks free from prison four years after being found guilty for a crime he perpetrated with his lover, Ruth (Rooney Mara). He swears he’ll come back for her and their daughter, expressing his love first as an inmate, then as a fugitive on the run, through letter after letter.
 

What is Joaquin Phoenix doing in 'I'm Still Here'?

By Sarah Sluis

Perhaps you remember about a year ago Joaquin Phoenix announced he was quitting acting.  Soon after, news surfaced that Phoenix was going to film a documentary (or was it a mockumentary?) about his experience leaving the movies and becoming a rapper.  His celebrity friend Casey Affleck would direct.

Now, the trailer is out, giving audiences a first look at the movie, I'm Still Here.

The film is a rather baffling project, especially for a two-time Oscar nominee, and apparently film buyers were unsure about whether the movie was a mockumentary or documentary.  Nevertheless, it was picked up by Magnolia, and will release in less than a month, as a special presentation at the Toronto Film Festival.  I'm not placing much money on it doing well: it has a confusing premise that could likely backfire, and Phoenix is not a public figure that graces the tabloids regularly, which means there is limited interest in his personal life.

What's odd and sad, however, is that his decision to give up acting and pursue music seems like some kind of tribute to his brother.  According to that crowd-sourced encyclopedia Wikipedia, his brother River Phoenix was in the process of developing a career as a musician when he died of a drug overdose outside of a club.  Joaquin was the one who called 911 and tried to save him.  Joaquin Phoenix has had an interesting life in his own right, enough to create a biographical documentary, not a mock one: his family grew up in the cult Children of God before rejecting it and changing their last name from "Bottom" to "Phoenix." He has struggled with fame before, quitting acting for a year after his brother died, and also gone to rehab for alcohol addiction.  Despite the solemn, existential voiceover at the beginning of the trailer, the movie apparently is a hard R, including graphic sex and gross-out moments.  That seems like some hiding from the truths of his life rather than searching for discovery.  Then there's the fact that the production is currently the target of a lawsuit by someone alleging sexual harassment from Affleck.

Despite my reticence to see the movie because I suspect it will be narcissistic and navel-gazing (and, apparently, gross), there's something intriguing about someone who is drawing a thin line between reality and fiction.  Nowadays reality shows have become more scripted, leaving audiences to wonder--was that set up, or was that for real?  Phoenix, though he may loathe to say it, seems to following in the path of those MTV series "Laguna Beach," "The City," and "The Hills," which purported to follow the lives of the cast members but were in fact scripted to an inscrutable degree.  In such a case, the fictional world spills over into the real world. Just as Phoenix acted oddly on "David Letterman," perhaps while in character, the storyline in the MTV shows was extended to the tabloids, which followed the fictional relationships created on television--and to further blur the line, some of them actually existed.

I'm Still Here may hit theatres and generate lots of publicity, or it may quietly fade like so many other specialty releases. But it reflects an impulse in our society to experience "reality," even if that reality is scripted.